Marina got up, too, and disappeared into what I suppose was the kitchen. She came back a few minutes later with a tray of soup. We ate the soup, which was a decent tomato cream, and then the salad, which was a Gorgonzola sort of thing that was too rich for my taste. By the time Marina came back with the main meal of beef filet, Stephanie was back, smelling like Ivory soap, but with a scowl that would have curdled hot milk on a cold day. Marina introduced Stephanie to the table. Whatever substance she had ingested prior to the party had begun to wear off. There were shadows under her eyes, and her skin looked pasty. She stumbled over the names. The fat man with the bald head and the red fringe accompanying Lila was named Phillip Sullivan, “Daddy’s business partner from New York.” She forgot Thelma’s name entirely. And she called Diana “Susannah,” which Diana accepted rather placidly, and ended up with Madeline, who was sitting next to her.
“Stephanie, this is Mrs. McKenzie.”
Stephanie poked at her beef, dropped her fork, stared at me, and said, “Your wife?”
“Hey,” Madeline said. “I’ve heard a lot about your horse. His name’s Beecher, right?”
The kid kept staring at me.
“Stephanie,” Marina said in a warning way.
She blinked like a lizard and turned to Madeline. “Yeah. That’s right. Beecher.” She ducked her head and poked at the beef again.
There was a strained silence.
“You’re from New York, Phillip,” Madeline said, turning to the fat man.
He leaned back in his chair and peered at her with slitted eyes. It was a most peculiar quirk. “Yep. The Big Apple.”
“Phillip is interested in buying an event horse,” Lila said in a rushed way. “He’s up here for a few days, just to look around at all the . . . talent.” She dimpled, implying perhaps that the talent was herself.
“Ha ha. That’s right,” Sullivan said.
“Sully’s looking to get into bed with me and the vets,” McClellan said from his end of the table.
“I beg your pardon?” Victor choked a little on his wine.
“Not that kind of bed, I hope.” Lila twinkled merrily.
“Brew’s got this good little business going, see,” Sullivan said heavily. “FieldChek, innit, Brew?”
“At-point field testing for EIA,” Diana said at my blank look, “or so Ben Grazley told me.”
“A portable Coggins,” Victor said alertly. “Ah. Quite a convenience for those who show.”
It would be quite a convenience, indeed.
“We think it’s got a nice little market niche,” McClellan said complacently. “Won’t make us a ton of money, but you never know where something like that’s gonna go.” He belched.
“Ben Grazley was a partner in this group?” I asked.
“Was, yeah,” McClellan said, “so we have room for another partner. You interested, doc? One veterinarian’s just like another.”
Nothing ventured, nothing gained. “Was Schumacher involved with this, as well?”
“Well, he was. Hard luck,” Brewster said. “I see your point. No good investing in a nice little business where the partners drop off like flies, is there? Ha ha.”
“Ha ha,” Sullivan said. “We might want to talk to you, Mac, after dinner. I’m ready when you are. Anytime. Anyplace. Anywhere.” He laughed, again. Loudly.
The table froze for a long moment. We had all gone to significant lengths to avoid any talk of the Summersville Sniper.
“This,” Stephanie said loudly, “is, like, incredibly boring. Can I go now?”
“Sit right there, young lady,” McClellan said. “You’ll wait until we’ve finished.”
“This party sucks,” she muttered. She rose halfway from her chair. At the end of the table, McClellan raised his hand in a threatening way.
“Beecher’s a Swedish Warmblood, I think,” Madeline said loudly to Greg. “One of my favorite breeds for eventing. One of my favorite breeds ever, in fact.”
Diana North jumped in, too, bless her. She smiled at Stephanie. “How do you find the breed, Stephanie?”
“And how is he over fences?” Madeline added.
“How is he over fences?” Stephanie repeated insolently. She sank back into her seat. She looked at her mother with a “get this” kind of expression. Marina fumbled into weary speech. “Forgive us, Madeline. You know how competitive the horse world can be.”
“Well, sure,” Madeline said, puzzled.
“It’s just, we heard that Allegra Fulbright is staying with you. Is that right?”
“Yes,” I said pleasantly.
Marina turned to me. “She’s not competing, is she?”
“I don’t believe so, no.”
“She’d better not be,” Stephanie said. It was the first time she’d spoken more than a few words at a time. The child had an unfortunate voice: whiney and high pitched and all of it through her nose. The whole table stopped talking out of sheer surprise. “I mean, like, you’d think she’d be ashamed to show her face anywhere near a horse show.” That whine was replaced by a nasty giggle. “She’s just a little bitch and everybody knows it. I mean, everybody knows she was screwing her brains out with all the top riders from Devon last year. She probably even screwed the judges. I mean, that horse of hers, where’d he come from, anyway?” She made a face. “Some auction, I think. I mean, like, who brings an auction horse to Devon and has it win unless there’s something dirty going on?”
I looked at Marina. It’s the mother’s job, after all, to instill manners into the kits. She shrugged. “Well, from what we’ve all heard . . . I have to say that Stephanie isn’t far off.”
Which left the job to Madeline. Madeline looked gravely at Stephanie until the girl broke her gaze and looked down at her plate. Madeline’s voice was soft, but there was no arguing with it. “That, young lady, is enough of that. Sit up. And remember your manners.”
She sat up.
“And apologize to the dinner guests, please.”
Stephanie muttered something that may have been an apology.
Marina sat with a face like a stone. Greg D’Andrea stared into his plate as if it were running the last twenty seconds of the Kentucky Derby. Diana North looked like she was somewhere else. Phillip Sullivan continued eating. And then Brewster McClellan broke the silence. The boozy son of a gun clapped his hands together one-two-three and shouted, “’Bout time somebody slapped that kid up the side of the head. Kids can get away with anything nowadays.”
Now what could anyone around that table say to that?
Stephanie ate her steak with short, nasty stabs of her fork. I wanted to go home, sit down with Madeline, and swallow a large slug of Laphroaig. But McKenzies never back off. So I drank my water, ate the meringue Marina brought out from the kitchen, and made a polite mention of the food.
“Yes,” she said dully. “Thank you.”
“It’s me you want to thank, doc. I’m the one that pays the bills from the Inn at Hemlock Falls.” Brewster rose and shouted down the table. His half-full glass of Scotch tipped and spread the remainder of its contents over the white tablecloth. “You think she cooked this? Bullshit. It’s fancy take-out.” He tossed back his glass of wine. He was on his feet, so of course, all of us rose as well. “’Fore you all go, I wanna show you a real horse.”
“Has someone been discussing fake horses?” I asked politely.
“Ha ha ha ha,” Brewster said. “Come on, barn’s out this way.” He stumbled around in a half circle, found the French doors, and banged them open. Cold air rushed in. The rest of us exchanged looks of consternation. It’d been a mild March, but it was still pretty nippy out there. And I worry about Madeline.
“Barn’s heated,” Greg D’Andrea said to me. “And it’s a short walk.”
“I’m fine. But Madeline has no coat.”
“I’ll be fine, my dear.” She laughed. “I’m pretty well upholstered.” This eased the atmosphere considerably. She put her hand on my arm. Stephanie had taken the chance to lea
ve, and Madeline gazed at her empty chair in a considering way. “Quite a mannerless young lady.”
Greg smiled for the first time that night. It looked good on him. “Quite an understatement. Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to get your coat for you, ma’am?”
“Nonsense!” Madeline drew her arm through mine. “I’ve got my love to keep me warm.”
Which was banal, but true. It did keep us warm all the way out to the barn.
The barn was spectacular. The barn was heated, and although this is a practice I find generally unhealthy for horses, it is quite comfortable for humans. And it was spotless. Most horse people care more about the barn than the house. I’ve even known a few places where the barn had hot water and the house didn’t. One spends the money first on the horse, second on the horse, and third on oneself, if there’s any left over after one and two.
This barn was built of pale stained oak inside and outside. And a barn is just where pale oak belongs. The stalls had double Dutch doors on the outside walls that led to the turnout paddocks. There was a hot water washroom, a grooming stall with hot blowers . . . and of course there was Beecher.
We stopped in front of his stall. He looked larger and more magnificent than ever against the wood.
“Pretty impressive, isn’t he?” Brewster said. Someone had left a dressage baton hanging on the tack hook in front of Beecher’s stall. Brewster picked it up and held it out as if it were an épée. Then he danced as if fencing with an invisible man. “Anyone want to take a bet on who’s gonna win at Earlsdown this year?” He jumped forward as if to thrust home, a drunken simulacrum of Cyrano de Bergerac.
“He’s wonderful,” Diana North said. “Just wonderful.”
“Take him out of the stall, Marina,” Brewster said. “Let the folks here see him strut his stuff.”
“Brewster, I don’t think I should.” Marina hugged herself and shivered. “He hasn’t been himself lately.” She twitched like a horse plagued by flies. “Where’s Stephanie? Greg, go find Steph, would you? She can take him out of the stall.”
I folded my arms and watched. This was a woman who was afraid of horses. Or of this horse, at least. You could practically smell it.
Brewster belched, with the pleased air of somebody who’d accomplished something. “Jesus Christ, do I have to do everything myself around here? Honest to god, I pay for everything myself.” He fumbled at the latch and slid the stall door open with a clang. “Here, you sum-a-bitch. Get on out here.” He gave us a sloppy grin. “Horse comes for me better than anyone else.”
Now, most horses don’t really care for the smell of liquor. As kind as he looked, Beecher didn’t seem to, either. It was that, or the fact that Brewster was loud and pretty obviously blistered. So the horse jibbed and backed instead of coming forward. Brewster swore, swung the baton around like a baseball bat, and hit Beecher a hard one over the muzzle. The horse backed into the far corner of the stall, eyes rolling. Blood dripped scarlet onto the snip on his nose.
McClellan raised the baton again. I reached over, grabbed the back of his shirt collar, and dragged him out of the stall. I tore the baton out of McClellan’s hand and threw it down the aisle. I took two steps forward and looked McClellan in the face.
If you’d hit the silence in that barn with a hammer, it would have shattered.
Diana North moved first. “We can fix that cut, Dr. McKenzie.” She behaved as if she were on a routine barn call. She stepped past McClellan and into the stall as if McClellan didn’t exist. “I’m pretty sure I saw a first-aid kit down by the tack room.”
I stepped into the stall, too.
“I’ll get the first-aid kit,” Madeline said.
“I’ll come with you, Maddy,” Lila said.
Victor grunted, “Here you go, McClellan.” And the old boy took Brewster by the shoulder and frog-marched him down the aisle. Greg D’Andrea sprang into action and went right along with them. Phillip Sullivan, on the other hand, blinked like a large somnolent lizard on a rock and said, “What’s the big deal?”
Diana took Beecher by the halter and settled the big horse down. Greg and Victor began a falsely hearty conversation about where the horse had been and whom he’d competed against and what vet had done the prepurchase exam.
Madeline brought me the first-aid kit. She looked pale. I clasped her hand briefly. She pulled my head down and whispered in my ear: “Look!” She held the Red Cross kit in one hand; the other was clenched shut. She opened her fingers to reveal a pair of wadded-up gloves. She put her hand under my nose.
Gasoline.
I folded the gloves and put them in my pocket. I got the Betadine and cleaned out the cut. I ran my hands up and down Beecher’s legs. All the while, Diana North held the horse by the bridle and spoke pleasantly to him. It took Beecher a while to settle down, but just as I’d thought when I’d met her, Diana had a pleasing way with animals. Fairly soon the old boy had dropped his head and relaxed.
Horses are amazing creatures.
I tucked the bloody swabs of cotton into my pocket, and felt to make certain that the gasoline-soaked gloves were still there. As I looked down to check, I noticed a glass vial in the bedding.
McClellan’s raucous voice grated on my ear. “. . . I can tell you that. And then I had to fire the sum-a-bitch.”
“McClellan.” Nobody ignores that tone of voice from me. “Was I the last person to see this horse?”
McClellan didn’t look up, but he stopped his gabbing to Victor and answered sullenly. “Who the hell knows?”
“You were the last one to see him,” Marina said. “You said he was fine.”
I frowned at the syringe. It was not dated, of course, but the record would be. “Did Schumacher leave you a bill that last time he was here?”
Any medication would be listed there.
“No. His office sends it on to us later. Why?”
“Did Schumacher say anything else about the horse?”
“Just that he was bruised from getting his leg caught,” Marina said nervously. “And those, um, little lice bites on his neck.” She looked into the rafters of the spotless barn, which was, of course, free of vermin of any type.
“That sum-a-bitch turns up lame for the show, he’s gonna get a bullet through the skull,” McClellan said.
“I wish you wouldn’t talk like that, Brewster. He was a little off,” Marina said. “That’s all. He wasn’t lame, as such.”
“Anything wrong with that sum-a-bitch, I want my money back. A bullet in the head.” He laughed. “Yep. That’ll teach ’em.”
That laugh was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Nine
MADELINE avers that my commitment to conduct a private inquiry into the veterinarian murders began when I lost my temper. Perhaps she was right. Paris’s vow to avenge the death of Hector arose from just such a loss of temper: Trojan honor had been impugned with the desecration of the hero’s body; veterinary honor had been assaulted by that crass boor McClellan. Not to mention the integrity of that wonderful horse.
Driven by righteous fury by the blow to the animal, fueled further by that sneering bellow, I escorted my wife from that overstyled pile of a barn and drove the both of us home.
As I hung up my anorak on the coat tree inside our back door, I realized I had come to a decision:
I wanted to nail McClellan.
“The man’s a wart.” I draped my muffler over my coat, removed my galoshes and went straight to the liquor cabinet. I needed a brandy, neat. “A smear on the windshield of life. A carbuncle.”
Madeline hung her coat neatly next to mine. She’d swept her hair up on top of her head, and a few stray curls drifted around her ears. She looked beautiful, though tired. “I don’t know, Austin. I feel kind of sorry for him. For all of them, as a matter of fact. Have you ever seen an unhappier family?” She slung her purse over the back of one of the kitchen chairs and sat down at the table.
“Sorry for him? Ha! With a trail of dead and discredited
veterinarians in his wake! Hardly.”
“Poor Marina. Can you imagine being married to him? And what about having him for a father! And, Austin . . .” She paused and took a deep breath. “What about the gloves?”
The gloves. I withdrew them from my coat pocket. The reek of gasoline permeated the kitchen. And the facts were strongly in favor of someone having drained a portion of gasoline from the dead Dr. Grazley’s car.
“We’d better put them in a plastic bag,” Madeline said. She pulled one out of a drawer and neatly sealed the gloves up. “Where? I know. The freezer.” She tucked the package behind the ice cubes. “They’ll keep just fine until you can get hold of that Provost character.”
I frowned. “It doesn’t seem too neat, to have found them like that? I take it they were in the first-aid kit?”
“Tucked underneath them. By themselves, they aren’t evidence, Austin. I mean, there’s a pair of gasoline-soaked gloves in our garage from the time you wrecked the lawn mower.”
“I did not destroy the lawn mower.”
“Did it work before you got your hands on it?”
I didn’t dignify this with a response.
“And does it work now?”
I failed to respond to this, as well. “This is not getting us any further.” I picked up the conversation where we had left off. “Am I sorry for his wife and daughter? Possibly. I’ll have to think about it.” I regarded Madeline with deep affection. “I must say, my dear, that I was enormously proud of you and the way you handled young Stephanie. The dispassionate, but eminently fair rebuke.”
Madeline looked thoughtful. “Well, a little embarrassment is good for that kind of kid once in a while. But that was nothing to what you did, Austin.” She raised her eyes to mine and said with heartrending simplicity, “You were a hero.”
“Nonsense. As for McClellan? As I said—a wart.” I poured two fingers of Five Star Hennessy into a glass, and then sank into my recliner. “I’m convinced he’s behind all of this. Something’s rotten here, Madeline. Very rotten, indeed. And I refuse to believe a sixteen-year-old is behind crimes of this nature.”
The Case of the Roasted Onion Page 11